Preliminary Exam
History and Gender; Latino/a and Chicano/a Studies
February 2010
Please choose two questions from Part One and one question from Part Two for a total
of three questions. Be sure your essays have a clear line of argument and engage with
both history and historiography, discussing both scholars and scholarly work where
appropriate. As per History Department regulations, the total time for this exam is
seven hours.
Part One – Comparative US/Latin American Gender and History – ANSWER TWO
QUESTIONS
1. To what extent is Joan Scott’s two-part definition of gender, as explained in “Gender
– A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”, universally applicable? Are there other,
more influential definitions and conceptualizations of gender in Latino/a studies?
2.
“…cross-cultural feminist work must be attentive to the micropolitics of context,
subjectivity, and struggle, as well as to the macropolitics of global economic and
political systems and processes.” Does this quote from Chandra Mohanty
(“Feminism Without Borders”, 2003) reflect the current perspectives of prominent
Chicano/a historians, or, rather, have they tended to produce more focused,
localized narratives?
3. How do you differentiate US women of color feminism as an analytic
from Latin American feminism as an analytic?
4. How would you periodize Mexican feminism and why? (This question
relates only to the years your dissertation will cover.)
Part Two – Theory, Praxis and Politics – ANSWER ONE QUESTION
5. You have been asked to give a lecture to a large undergraduate American History
class on the topic, “Gender on the Border,” focusing on the border between the US
and Latin America. What three advance readings would you assign for the class, and
why? What major points would you plan to make during your lecture? What new
ideas and perspectives do you hope the students would learn from your talk?
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6. “U.S.-third world feminists” have provided us important critiques of
identity politics, but these critiques have necessarily engendered an
identity imagined as the basis for potential social movements. In what
ways does U.S. third world feminism negotiate, neglect, embrace, and/or
account for this contradiction?
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Comparative Women and Gender
Preliminary Examination Questions
April 2009
Please answer ONE question from each of the following sections. Your answers should
be in full sentences and paragraph form.
Section One:
Please answer ONE of the following questions:
1. Eleanor Abdella Doumato writes, “The Shari‘a is ambiguous not only because it is
uncodified in written statutes, but because it is subject to the interpretation of the ‘ulama’.
. . . From the standpoint of the rulers, the ambiguity of rights in the Shari‘a offers the
flexibility needed to bend with the political wind, so that Islam can be evoked either to
liberalize opportunities for women, or to levy new restrictions on them.” On the other
hand, Azar Tabari writes, “There is a common, basic, unified doctrinal and legal core to
Islam. A number of fundamental pillars of Islam are shared by all, and these are what
define Islam in contrast to other religions and to other political or legal systems. No
amount of ‘interpretation’ or historical contextualization can dilute this doctrinal core.
The Qur’an is quite explicit about the rights of men over women. . . . That women are
only half as equal as men in legal and financial matters is specified with great precision. .
. . For those who accept the authority of the Qur’an, these injunctions cannot be avoided
or argued away.”
How flexible/ambiguous is the Shari‘a with regard to women’s rights in marriage,
divorce, child custody, and inheritance? How important is Islamic law in everyday life?
What moves, if any, have been made toward reinterpretation of the law in recent decades,
and are such moves beneficial to women?
2. How unified is the Muslim world in its perspectives on the importance and nature of
gender as an organizing principle of society? Are there particular perspectives that can
be attributed to Islam per se, or are social factors more important in shaping attitudes
toward women and the extent to which social roles should be determined by gender?
Section Two:
Answer ONE of the following questions:
1. How does the history of the household contribute to our understanding of early modern
Europe? What is the relationship between the household and the history of women and
gender in early modern Europe?
2. How useful is the category “woman” in early modern Europe? What other social or
cultural categories existed and how did they interact with gender? Where differences
more important among women or similarities? Discuss with reference to the relevant
historiography.
Section Three:
Answer ONE of the following questions:
1. One of the early promises of women’s and gender history was to challenge the reigning
periodization of history. To what extent has the field fulfilled this promise? What new
issues and insight into periodization is offered by your comparative reading in women’s
and gender history?
2. Defining the modern age as the period that witnessed the rise of the nation-state and
industrialization (which would be at different times in different places), compare the
impact of modernity on the status of women in Europe and the Middle East.
Written Preliminary Exam
Women & Gender
1. Choose ONE of the following gendered historical themes—conjugality, domesticity,
nationalism, feminism, religion, and education—and compare its treatment in scholarly
literature of TWO geographical areas. In what ways do the two areas overlap? What are
the main distinctions between them and how do you explain them? Are there particular
lessons that one area might learn from another?
2. Write a preliminary outline for a syllabus for an undergraduate course on the history of
women and gender at the University of Illinois. Include a paragraph articulating the
central aims of the course in which you discuss how you understand the history of
women and gender to be of fundamental importance if one is to understand history in
general. Specify the five to six books that are required reading and explain what they are
about and why you have chosen them, paying special attention to the ways they support
the central aims of the course.
3. Discuss the relationship of public to private in the historiography of women and gender
in Europe and its colonies. How helpful has this model been for understanding women
and gender? Why has this model been criticized and how valid do you find these
criticisms
4. Assess the transition from women's history to gender history in writing about women
and gender in Europe and its colonies. What comparison would you draw between the
evolution of the historiography of at least two different regions over the past twenty
years? Are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach the same or different in each
case?
5. The relationship between sexuality and gender is a common and complicated theme in
women’s and gender history. Compare and contrast the relationship between sexuality
and gender in the history and historiography of Europe and its colonies. What factors
help to explain the ways sexuality and gender interact in each case?
6. One of the early promises of women’s history was to challenge the reigning
periodization of history. To what extent has the field fulfilled this promise? What new
issues and insight into periodization is offered by your comparative reading in women’s
and gender history?
Global/Gender Preliminary Examination
Spring 2009
Answer one question from each section. You must do a total of three (3)
questions. Be sure each essay has a clear line of argument, addresses as many
dimensions of the question as possible, and offers relevant, persuasive evidence from
specific secondary sources wherever appropriate. Good luck!
Section I
A. World Systems theory has been an influential theoretical frame in studying global
history. Explain the basic premises of this theory with reference to the work of Immanuel
Wallerstein. Discuss how he draws from Marx, Braudel, and Dependency Theory.
World Systems theory has been criticized both for its rigid economic determinism and its
Eurocentric historiography. Discuss these critiques with references to theorists who have
advanced them.
B. Why is the body an important archive for practitioners of world history? What do
analyses of embodiment and corporality add to our understandings of global processes?
What differences do genealogies of the body in world historical context make to the
project of world history more generally?
Section II
A. How does gender re-orient world history as a scholarly field, a scalar exercise and a
pedagogical practice? What are the stakes of using gender as a positioning device for
materializing global exchanges, connections and encounters – as well as the limits
thereof? Why shouldn’t we just “add women and stir” to get a global gender field?
B. Chandra Mohanty argues that the very conception of “women” as a category of
analysis, proposes a homogenous group whose historical action is a priori identifiable.
How does such a critique change the way one understands “gender and history” in a
global context? How does the discussion of “womanhood” (and the essentialism it might
promote) and the social space it generates help us to advance competing narratives of
global history?
Section III
A. Is it possible to teach a global history survey class and without falling into
Eurocentrism? Does the idea of history inherently promote a Eurocentric view? What
type of texts and other possible material can you use in teaching such a class in order to
avoid the pitfalls of “presentism”?
B. You have been invited to develop and teach a fifteen-week survey course in World
History covering the period 1500 to the present. While your department chair has given
you a great deal of flexibility in terms of how to structure the course, she would like to
see histories of women and gender fully incorporated into the survey's approach and into
as many of its central themes as possible. In a carefully constructed course proposal,
identify the three major pedagogical goals for the course and then go on to discuss the
central themes that will be addressed over the weeks. Discuss three or four key readings
that you will require of your undergraduate students and explain their significance to the
intellectual architecture of the course.